Despicable Grinch.

I finally watched the Grinch movie that came out last year, the one with Dr. Strange as the Grinch, and here's my review. Yes, I realize it's silly to review a film that came out a year ago, but I don't care. Plus, I didn't read any other reviews of the animated movie, so if I read this while I'm writing it I can say I read one. For what that's worth.

Short version: It's not good.

Long version, with spoilers, I guess: Dr. Seuss' The Grinch doesn't have much to do with Dr. Seuss. I had some hopes for it, as it comes from Illumination, the company that gave us Despicable Me (pretty funny), The Secret Life of Pets (had good bits), Minions (they're funny), and Sing (not as bad as I expected). Also Despicable Me 2 and Despicable Me 3, which... Well, maybe I should have had more reservations.

Like all Illumination films, this movie has its moments. One expects that expanding the original 69-page book How the Grinch Stole Christmas! would require expanding the Grinch world, and the filmmakers do that right off. Their vision of Whoville in the opening scenes is a wonder for the eyes, a Where's Waldo-like vista with all kinds of Seussish things going on in a happy, busy city. With computer animation and a much huger budget, Illumination has made it into more of a real city than the small town of Chuck Jones's well-praised TV special. So it's worth a look just for that. The characters are Seussish as well, but they lean more human -- and not just in looks.

The Grinch himself looks good, fuzzy and green, but the problems set in right away with him and don't let up. But we'll get to that.

The main problem with this movie, and I believe the Ron Howard 2000 film (which I have been too appalled to sit through), is that the story is too slight to support a full-length film. It doesn't mean that Seuss's story is no good, or paper-thin; quite the reverse. Some stories are short because there isn't much story there, but there doesn't have to be; they are still powerful. Biblical films are often dull or weird because the stories in the Bible can be very short and to get ninety minutes of screen time they need ridiculous amounts of padding. O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" was blown up into a TV movie musical in 1958, and no surprise that didn't become a Christmas classic. Even Chuck Jones talked about having to add business to the Grinch story, like that slapstick stuff coming down Mount Crumpit, to make it into a half-hour TV special -- with time for commercials! (In 2018 film this also means writing a lot more verse for the narrator, but the writers have little knack for verse. Nor is Pharrell Williams able to carry any dramatic heft the way Karloff did; he's like a so-so reader at library story hour.)

One way Howard and the Illumination guys try to pack their movies is to try to develop the backstory of the Grinch himself, provide motivation for his wicked anti-Who, anti-Christmas actions. But here they fail. I keep saying that the problem with the Star Wars prequels is that George Lucas is too shallow to understand what turns a kid into Darth Vader, and I maintain that -- I never bought for a second that the boy and man we saw as Anakin Skywalker was the villain we met in 1977. The same thing goes in these movies for the Grinch. Howard tried it (I am informed) by making the Whos of Whoville vile, commercial punks who deserved to have their Christmas stolen, which guts the whole point of the story -- that being that the Whos understand the true meaning of Christmas while the Grinch does not. The Illumination people avoid that, at least. Their Whos are nice people who just happen to love Christmas, except for some reason when the Grinch was a kid, alone in a Whoville orphanage, no one did anything for him. It's all dollar-store psychoanalysis.

The Illumination crew doesn't understand the Grinch at all. Hell, in this movie the Grinch goes into Whoville to buy groceries. Groceries! Like a common old fart! Sure, he's mean to all the people he meets, but this is not our Grinch. The real Grinch is not hateful because he's alone, as in this movie; the real Grinch is alone because he is completely full of hate. He despises everyone. God knows what he eats, but he wouldn't go anywhere near Whoville to get it. This movie is not about Grinch; it is about Oscar the Grouch.

In some regards it's okay that the Grinch is a little less vicious in this movie; he is not loving to his dog Max, but is not cruel to him as in the TV special. That would be hard to take for a full-length film. People would be hoping the Grinch would die.

Max is still a great dog, but Cindy Lou Who is not a cute kid anymore. I just can't buy that Cindy Lou Who should be a conniver and a sneak, however much she loves her single (naturally) mom and her mentally unsound twin kid brothers; updating her into an older daredevil of a baby badass removes the contrast between her innocent love and the Grinch's hardened hate. They might as well be buddies at the end, because they're almost the same person here. They're two sides of the same two-headed coin.

It all makes for a cheap pantomime of the real thing. It hits the plot buttons -- Whos loving Christmas; Grinch angry; Grinch decides to stop Christmas from coming; the plan; the execution; the change of heart. None of the transitions feels logical against the background painted. The Grinch being grouchy is just not cruel enough to carry out this plan, and making his target a large city instead of a small town makes it more ridiculous that an irritable hermit would go to all the trouble. To carry out the plot he has to devise all kinds of gadgets and gizmos, and that's when you realize that this is not so much Grinch 1 as Despicable Me 4: A Very Despicable Christmas.

The Grinch's hope in the original is not so much to stop Christmas but to punish the Whos and make them cry, their crying and wailing being the sweet sound he desires, and you don't get that out of this Grinch. Because you don't get that, you also can't imagine why he would have the change of heart at the end -- especially since the filmmakers completely gut the entire reason for it. There's nothing about "the true meaning of Christmas" here -- just sort of a "if you sing you stop feeling bad" bit of stupidity that is completely useless. The Grinch's puzzler couldn't have puzzled that out because it is senseless. God forbid we should say anything about why we even have Christmas, what it means and why that would give people joy. Seuss was no Christian proselytizer, or even Christian, but he understood what Christmas meant -- salvation, God with us. All the motivations have had their legs cut out from beneath them, but the film is expected to run along anyway.

And I have to say, having heard so many wonderful things from fans of Benedict Cumberbach, I was terribly disappointed. He was awful, to my ear. I know friendly, charitable people who are scarier than this guy. He just sounds like a weenie. Again, you never get the feeling that this is the malcontent who could and would want to ruin Christmas out of hatred for the pests who live thousands of feet below his hermitage. He probably just needs some Metamucil.

There were bright spots. The humongous reindeer named Fred (yay!). His kid, presumably Li'l Fred. Kenan Thompson as the delusionally cheerful Bricklebaum. The screaming goat. A few sight gags -- one with a catapult particularly echoed the best of Chuck Jones. But for all its visual splendor, it is a misfire, a heartless simulacrum of Christmas love. The many families depicted give you the feel of a movie producer with his third wife and trophy child. Hollywood doesn't know anything about love and has even lost the knack for pretending it does.

If it is any consolation to Illumination (like they care what I think), the Grinch has historically been a stumbling block, except for the original book and the Chuck Jones masterpiece. In 1977 a prequel, Halloween Is Grinch Night, aired on ABC, and although they gave it an Emmy, it's lousy. Geisel even produced it, and it was still too dull to be creepy. It also doesn't jibe with the Grinch we knew. It smelled like a money grab. Just like the 2018 film.